Screencast: Trigger.io Forge in action

We’ve made it simple and super fast to build fully native apps, and we wanted to show that in action with this short video screencast. Check it out:

Code

In 5 minutes, I walk you through our demo photo-sharing app (the full code of which can be found on Github). The app is simple HTML, CSS and JavaScript and put together in an everyday text editor — all very familiar, even for a new web developer.

Just a few extra Forge API methods like forge.file.getImage that we use in the app to access native device features (in this case, the native camera) across platforms.

Build

The fun part is at the command line: building your code into native mobile apps using our cloud build service. Entering

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>forge build

will return the native builds (for each platform you’re developing for) to your local machine in seconds. If you’re keen to know how the magic happens behind the curtain, you can read up on it here.

Test

You can then run your builds right away using

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forge run

In the video, we run the app in the iPhone simulator and show you how the native features integrate into the app, and then how the same code can be deployed to the web, and you can use the web app as a way to drive more traffic to app-store downloads.

That’s it — no messing about with bloated IDEs or compiling, not a single line of native code, and a super fast build-and-test cycle.

Try it yourself

Let us know your thoughts on the video, we hope it helps — and if you like what you see, why not try it yourself. The initial setup gives you a bare-bones ‘hello world’ app, which you can build and run right away. Head to the docs for the nitty-gritty and to read up on more Forge API methods and new native UI components — there’s a detailed tutorial there for getting started, and we’ll be happy to help you out on our support desk if you have any trouble. We’re available around the clock at support@trigger.io.

We’ll be posting a followup screencast in the next couple of weeks on how to use Catalyst to debug your apps, so subscribe to our blog or follow us on Twitter to make sure you’re kept in the loop.